Why in the hell are you spending TWO GRAND on a car?!? I am smart and financially responsible so I got this:
Little Tikes Cozy Coupe 30th Anniversary Car https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001NQHN7S/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_hkzaCbVEB5H5E
This is more than enough car to get me to and from my 2 million dollar a year job. Plus there is enough room in the back for my weekly bag of lentils. There is no need to waste money on such a frivolous purchase. Sure a 1998 Toyota Corolla with 300,000 miles on it will get you to work, but at what cost? Use your brain or you will never FIRE. Stupid poor.
My daughter is turning one on Christmas, so I got her several things for both occasions. I got her a little red car to be pushed around in that she'll eventually be able to "drive" herself: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Tikes-Cozy-Coupe-Anniversary/dp/B001NQHN7S. I also got her some blocks (connecting ones and squishy ones), a bucket with shape cut outs that blocks can be shoved into, some big egg-shaped crayons and finger paints and construction paper, and several squishmallows lol.
The only vehicle you're pulling with that is this.
Just get the instructor to teach you in one these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B001NQHN7S/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_QP7TZAT7BRPDA98P9523
You're a dishonest liar.
> the statement that nobody knows why Kasyapa smiled.
That statement was never made.
In this thread exhibiting an excerpt attributed to HongRen, the teacher of HuiNeng, the 6th and last patriarch of the Chinese Zen tradition, due to the presence of several dubious elements regarding "proper posture" and meditation, I comment as follows:
> I think stuff like this is evidence that Zen probably started with HuiNeng.
This is historical speculation.
Up until HuiNeng we have an alleged one-to-one "transmission" of the dharma.
This ostensibly ends with HuiNeng.
Cao Xi, where HuiNeng taught, is often used in the Zen literature as a metaphor for Zen itself.
Cao Xi, in addition to being a place, is also the name of a stream/creek ("Xi"). The image is of a stream with many tributaries ... again, another reference to the idea of breaking the "one-to-one transmission."
Anecdotally, I believe I recall encountering this idea both in scholarship as well as in the Zen literature itself, mentioning how HuiNeng disrupted the one-to-one transmission.
Coupled with the different character and nature of several works attributable to those Masters who predate HuiNeng (with notable exceptions in Faith In Mind and Song of Enlightenment) there is certainly robust evidence for the notion that the "Zen tradition" as we think of it, is actually mostly generated from this "HuiNeng" character, or, at least, from Cao Xi.
This is also corroborated by ZongMi's attestation to the "HongZhou School", which would be later made popular by MaZu and which was in the same regional area.
Thus there is evidence that Zen may have originated from the revolutionary act of HuiNeng ending the chain of one-to-one-transmission in some dhyana school that he entered into.
"Evidence of", "probably", "may have", etc., are cautioned and conditional terms.
I'm not saying it is like I'm describing, but I am speculating that it may likely be as I describe, based on evidence and reason.
You addressed none of that and jumped right to a religious meltdown:
> Why?
> Do you assume that when a total scatterbrain walks into a monastery, there would be absolutely no masters commonly employing such techniques to make them teachable?
> It is like you just walked past a car looking through the windshield seeing a driving instructor showing a student how to adjust the steering wheel before the first lesson just to conclude that the instructor is disgracing the driving school because no handbrake turns in the wet were demonstrated on that day.
> And Foyan sings:
> At first, the mind is noisy and unruly; there is still no choice but to shift it back. That is why there are many methods to teach it quiet observation.
> Besides, pretty much everyone knows that zen started with Kasyapa's smile.
Your fist two paragraphs are nothing more than nonsensical religious apologetics.
Zen Masters don't employ anything to make anyone "teachable" and the fact that monasteries had brooms and latrines doesn't mean that you need to sweep the floor and shit in an outhouse in order to be enlightened anymore then the fact that they drank tea and meditated does either.
You're basically walking past a driving school and saying "I meditated while sitting in my Fisher Price red and yellow so I pretty much have a driver's license anyway."
Quoting FoYan out of context doesn't mean that "meditation makes people teachable".
"Shifting back" your attention to look at yourself is obviously not linked to meditation since you're on here advocating for meditation while being completely obtuse towards your own obvious intellectual failings.
If meditation could help you with the "shift", then your attempts to insert yourself into honest conversation about Zen would not be so dismal.
AFTER ALL THAT we finally get to the subject of your latest fail: this OP.
I gave you a similar response to your comment at the time.
IN THAT RESPONSE, I said:
> Pretty much no one knows that*, including you, because barely anyone has any idea why Kasyapa would have smiled, much less whether he really did and what it meant.
>> * ("Besides, pretty much everyone knows that zen started with Kasyapa's smile.")
In response, you said the following:
> Kasyapa's smile is exactly the transmission the Chan school is about. Here is Baiyun speaking of this and its coming down to the present day through his teaching:
> Master Baiyun Duan said to an assembly, In ancient times, in the assembly on Spiritual Mountain the World Honored One held up a flower and Kasyapa smiled. The World Honored One said, "I have the treasury of the eye of truth; I impart it to Kasyapa the elder. Transmit it successively; don't let it die out." It has come down to the present day.
> Chan lineage, referenced in records by Chan masters, traces itself back to Shakyamuni with Kasyapa as the first Indian Patriarch, Bodhidharma being number 28. You do not have to understand his smile to see this lineage.
> As for the role of practices for scatterbrains, here a bit from the Sayings and Doings of Baizhang on a related matter:
> "There is no meditation in the realm of desire" are also words of someone with one eye. Once it is said that there is no meditation in the realm of desire, how could one reach the realm of form? First, on the causal ground one cultivates two kinds of mental focus, after which one is able to reach the first meditation - focus with mental images and focus without mental images. Focus with mental images produces the realm of forms and such heavenly states as the four meditation heavens. Focus without mental images produces the formless realm and such heavenly states as the four empty realms. In the realm of desire clearly there is no meditation (ch’an); meditation begins in the realm of form.
> Remember, this is about guiding novices only. Mazu making it clear that people of inferior faculties need steps and stages:
> "People of superior faculties awaken as soon as they hear a real teacher's guidance, suddenly realizing the fundamental essence without going through steps, stages, or ranks. Therefore it is said, 'Ordinary people have changeable minds, whereas listeners do not.'
> Huangbo reinforcing that such practice is for not so great vessels:
> Q: What instructions have the Masters everywhere given for dhyana-practice and the study of the Dharma?
> A: Words used to attract the dull of wit are not to be relied on.
> Nowhere did I imply that such practices are to be relied upon or constitute high quality trademark zen pointers. It's just that denying the existence of such methods of dealing with people as part of the bigger picture is a bit odd.
Clearly, you lied in your OP.
But let's start with your first incorrect statement:
> You do not have to understand his smile to see this lineage.
This was the same gamble Dogen made.
Didn't work out for his religion.
Besides, the logic only works for someone who doesn't think critically.
Did the Zen tradition start with Buddha's enlightenment or Kasyapa's tranmission?
That's already a nuclear bomb of a question, but then we can ask, "If HuiNeng ended the one-to-one transmission, is it still 'Zen' if the tradition started with Kasyapa?"
I don't see how you could argue that the lineage is still the same, despite no longer being one-to-one, without understanding why Kasyapa smiled.
Then we get into the historical question of whether there was even a "Kasyapa".
So, in some vacuum of intellect and reason, you could ostensibly say "Zen started with Kasyapa" but only if you stop thinking right there and never question the idea again ... which would be failing in your practice of Zen.
So the fact that your claim wouldn't survive two seconds of contemplation from a Zen student is a pretty strong indication that it's not a legitimate claim about the origin of Zen.
As for the idea of "training novices", you have misinterpreted BaiZhang.
FoYan says:
>> People nowadays talk about certain discernment, but how do you discern with certainty? It is not a matter of declaring, "This is an initiatory saying, this is a saying for beginners, that is a saying for old-timers." It's not like this at all. As a matter of fact, letting go all at once is precisely how to discern with certainty—there will be no different focus at any time.
The "meditation" BaiZhang is allegedly talking about is not the meditation for "scatterbrains".
(Continued below ...)
But what if it's this: https://www.amazon.com/Little-Tikes-Cozy-Coupe-Anniversary/dp/B001NQHN7S
I don't think driving will be a problem considering this is his car
Its not that windy, what do you drive, a Little Tikes Cozy Coupe?
Buy the little fella a sweet new car and tell him to drive away in it, forever. Why is this even a question? Liars get dumped.
cozy coupe
Its ok. Amazon has plenty left!
That's kinda mean. they should probably help her out. Get her one of these so she doesn't need to even ask for a ride anymore.